Make Me Heal is one of those terrible websites that promotes breast implants and the lie that they are perfectly safe. It is reassuring, supportive, warm and fuzzy. Starting from the assumption that every woman unhappy with her chest size is considering implants, it has positioned itself as a trusted place to go to help women do it. I’ve written about it before. It makes me sick!

Today, however, the site actually has something that could be useful: a plug for one of its product called the Breast Implant Sizer. Here’s the description:

The Breast Implant Sizer comes with two implants that are filled by a syringe with water. The syringe has millimeter measurements, and 1 millimeter is equal to 1 cubic centimeter (this is the measurement used for determining breast implant size). As one fills the implant with the syringe multiple times, the patient simply needs to write down on paper how many cc’s one is adding each time. When a desired size is achieved, the implant is inserted inside the bra and the patient is able to visualize how the implant fits. The patient can walk around with the implant all day and get a more accurate visualization of how they would look and feel at that size. As the implant can go up to 600 cc’s, one can adjust the implant to visualize their new look in different sizes. which helps you to walk around with bra inserts that you can size yourself, playing around with the water you put into them until you find the chest size you like. Then you can tell your plastic surgeon exactly how many cc’s your implants should be.

At first, I was appalled. Here is a product, another money-making tool, to make implants more fun, and this under the guise of accuracy and avoiding a second surgery because you’re not happy with the size of your first implants! There’s no mention, of course, about the high rate of second surgeries due to complications, regardless of how you like your implants.

I was quickly building myself up into a sputtering rage when Sybil pointed out how useful the product could actually be. She said, “I think that stopping at buying and using the Breast Implant Sizer would be perfect. It is a simple way to stuff a bra rather undergoing surgery.” She also pointed out that, economically, filling a larger bra without implants, is far less expensive. Surgery and the numbers of repeat surgeries put women on a slippery slope to poverty. Think of what a woman could do with the money she saves by getting the Sizer and NOT getting implants!

Sybil’s so smart — always thinking of ways to help women be happier with their breasts yet be safe.

Unfortunately, Sybil couldn’t completely cheer me up because I also saw today news about UK women getting implants because of pressure from their men. Dr. Debra Gimlin, a sociology lecturer at Aberdeen University, interviewed 60 women, 20 from Scotland, 20 from England and 20 from the United States. While the Americans consistently claimed it was for themselves, nearly a quarter of the British women indicated they wanted to make themselves more appealing to a male partner.

Dr Gimlin said the differences in British and American healthcare culture could be a reason for the women’s contrasting accounts. “The privatised US system enshrines individual choices for those that can afford it, while the NHS ensures individual access,” she explained.

“As such, healthcare in Britain is considered a social right rather than a consumer good or something to be ‘earned’.”

She said many American women saw their surgery as an investment. “One 50-year-old told me that while there were things her house needed she felt she needed a facelift more than it did.”

Dr. Gimlin also found that British women were more inclined to keep their surgery a secret from family and friends and were often self-critical of their decision.

Well, hooray for American women for being so independent-minded.

I have been consoling women who have gotten very sick from implants for 11 years now. When I read stuff like this, it’s very emotionally tough for me, because I keep thinking about the women who write me every day wishing they had known what could happen. I can’t believe that, in all this time, our message about the risks of implants has not made it to the mainstream. I fear for what will happen to even more women in the future, knowing as I know that even the FDA, manufacturers and plastic surgeons have no idea what silicone does in the body, yet women trust their message about how safe implants are.

Hopefully this blog will get the facts to women before they make choices about their breasts that could terribly change their health and lives.

God Bless America for allowing women to have a choice. Bless them to make an informed one.